The recent emphasis on recycling and recovery of valuable components in industrial as well as residential and environmental waste streams has spawned a growing pool of raw carbon resources. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,425,315 entitled “Method To Recapture Energy From Organic Waste,” and incorporated herein by reference, teaches methods of recovering carbon from organics-containing waste streams, and the special properties that the recovered carbon possesses. As described in that disclosure, organic waste covers a very broad range of materials, such as auto shredder residue (produced at a level of at least 4 million tons per year and containing potentially 1.4 million tons of carbon) and municipal waste (256 million tons per year potentially producing 90 million tons of carbon). These resources are of interest due to the high level of metallic values in the waste, including, in the case of municipal waste, about one half the used aluminum beverage cans sold in the U.S. per year.
Another source of carbon, lacking any metallic values, is the large amount of waste wood generated in the clean up of forest and Bureau of Land Management property. There have been numerous proposals to use the waste wood for the generation of energy. At an estimated 80 tons of waste wood per acre of land, millions of tons of carbon would be recovered in these energy extraction methods. Similarly, carbon will be recovered from the large supplies of chicken litter and bovine and hog excrement that are starting to be diverted into energy production technologies. Each of these carbon sources represent an undesirable environmental problem that could become a major energy source.
Another potential carbon source includes the wastes from coal processing. “Gob Piles” and “Black Ponds” containing 38 million tons per year represent 5 million tons of carbon. Oil sand residue, oil shale and heavy crude oil, which are not now recoverable, augment a very large total.
The carbon produced in many of these recovery processes, and particularly in the process described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,425,315, entitled “Method To Recapture Energy From Organic Waste” no longer resembles the organic waste from which it originated. For example, the organic waste from auto shredder residue, which includes plastics, rubber, urethane, and cellulosics such as cloth and wood, becomes carbon. The carbon is in chains and cross-linked, but very fine. It has been shown to range from about 2 to about 20 microns in diameter, which is not nano-scaled, but micron-scaled. The result is a very high surface area carbon product that is also very porous to gases and liquids. It is, therefore, ideal for processing into valuable products. While the carbon produced will have an inherent energy value, dependent upon the source and purity of the product, its value, as a combustion product is probably comparable to coal at approximately $40-$60 per ton. It is recognized that the economic conversion of this carbon to hydrocarbons such as methane, methanol, ethanol, and propane would greatly enhance the value of its production. This added value would greatly enhance the environmental benefits foreseen in utilizing the waste recycling and carbon recovery processes described above.